Pick a Fight

by Thomas McGreevy on May 17, 2013

“I need to pick the fight myself… then, most important of all, I need to run barefoot toward it.  But I want to go barefoot because it’s holy ground; I want to be running because time is short and none of us has as much runway as we think we do; and I want it to be a fight because that’s where we can make a difference.  That’s what love does.” – Bob Goff (Love Does)

 

You have to know that there are things worth fighting for and you have to choose to pick the fight.

You have to run like one who wants to win a race because your life is flying by.

You have to know that there are things that are greater than you are… things that are sacred… so you approach the fight in humility.

 

“I’m going to pick a fight” – William Wallace (Braveheart)

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Identity

by Thomas McGreevy on May 15, 2013

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

You actually need the tribe.  It is the only way you can become your true self.  It is through them and with them that you are yourself and it is your responsibility to utilize them for that purpose.  You have to open yourself to them.  You have to release your identity in your interaction with them.  But, all of this is much different than taking on a collective identity.  It is quite the opposite.  You are the only one like you.  You must come to the table.  You have to engage in that struggle to keep from being “overwhelmed” by them.  You bring yourself… as scary as that may sound.  The rest of them are relying on it for the revealing of their own identities.  We don’t realize how hard we have been working to fit the collective identity.  We are trained this way from the very beginning.

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The Real Thing

by Thomas McGreevy on May 14, 2013

“There’s a song that they sing when they take to the highway
A song that they sing when they take to the sea
A song that they sing of their home in the sky
Maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep
But singing works just fine for me”
(James Taylor – Sweet Baby James)

If visions of heaven are just something that helps you to sleep at night, then you haven’t been told about the real thing.  It inspires people to live by faith (Hebrews 11).  When people see it from a distance they realize the journey they are on, how it has already begun and how it will lead them through great danger… and then they set out.  If it doesn’t speak to your deep desires then it isn’t the real thing.

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Is There Any Glory Left?

by Thomas McGreevy on May 13, 2013

”This field of glory is harvested, and the crop is already appropriated” – Abraham Lincoln

 

Abraham Lincoln in his Lyceum address talked about how our government was an “undecided experiment” testing the great proposition, upon which our country was founded, the ability of a people to govern themselves.  He talked about how so many had found glory in the success of that experiment and about how, now that it is done, there is no glory left.  Clearly, Lincoln was wrong.  Later he would be called on to save our union from a fatal fracture.  There were still great deeds to be done.  He was wrong and every man who has resigned himself to a life of going through the motions is also wrong.

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Made for Another World

May 10, 2013

“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” – C.S. Lewis There is something about coming to this realization that enables a person to live well. Read about the great people of faith in Hebrews chapter 11.  “All [...]

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What’s in the Box?

May 8, 2013

“There’s an exercise that Patricia Ryan Madson describes in her wonderful book, Improv Wisdom. (Ms. Madson taught improvisational theater at Stanford to standing-room only classes for twenty years.) Here’s the exercise: Imagine a box with a lid. Hold the box in your hand. Now open it.  What’s inside?  It might be a frog, a silk [...]

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The Kingdom

May 6, 2013

“Somewhere beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see” – Les Miserables  Is there anything that is worth fighting for?  Do you long for something beyond all the walls that surround you, beyond the foes that you are facing?  Do you believe it could be?  Is it worth making a stand?  Is [...]

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Everything That Makes Me a Slave I Learned In School

May 3, 2013

How to stay in line, How to do what the rest of my peers are doing (fit in), How to avoid failure at all cost, How to provide “correct” answers, How to make sure everything I do is safe, How to be subordinate, How to be compliant, How to be invisible…

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There is Something You Are Supposed to Do

May 2, 2013

“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them?  Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their [...]

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Can You See Him?

May 1, 2013

“If there were an idiot who thought plays existed on their own, without an author (not to mention actors, producer, manager, stage hands and what not), our belief in Shakespeare would not be much effected by his saying, quite truly, that he had studied all the plays and never found Shakespeare in them.  The rest [...]

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